A House of Many Mounts

Multiple viewing locations call for mounts that allow TVs to move.

It’s rare that you find a household where people will sit in the same spot, in the same room, to watch TV. People wander, walk around and change positions. And that’s okay. As this Los Altos Hills home demonstrates, your displays can move with you; they just need to be attached to the right kind of wall mount. For this project of multiple entertainment areas, custom electronics (CE) pro Trevor Gilreath, Infinity Custom Audio, Santa Clara, Calif. employed a variety of different mounting mechanisms, each one carefully selected and installed to suit its respective room environment and the owners’ viewing style.

For example, in the master bedroom, a Peerless mount allows a 60-inch Samsung TV to extend from the wall and swivel (manually) toward a sitting area. For from-the-bed viewing the owner can gently turn the TV back to its original position. The Peerless mount is designed to recess into the wall, which allows it to hold the TV flat against the wall when it’s in its home position.

Gilreath took things up a notch in the family room, where a motorized Omnimount mount can be operated from a handheld Crestron ML-600 remote. On command, it stretches out from an entertainment cabinet, putting a 65-inch LED Samsung TV in a prime viewing location for people sitting on the couch. This setting is one of three that were programmed into the remote by Gilreath. Should the owner take a seat by the fireplace, a touch of a button signals the mount to swivel the TV toward that area. Another button tells it to twist in the opposite direction so that people can see the screen from the kitchen. When the show is over, a command from the remote signals the mount to suck the TV back into the cabinet.

3D games and movies are the entertainment du’jour in a lower-level rec room, so Gilreath attached a 46-inch Samsung TV to a mount that fixes the TV securely in place. Since 3D looks best when viewed from a specific “sweet spot,” allowing the TV to move could have ruined the 3D effects.

Fixed screens are ideal for dedicated home theaters, too, where viewers usually choose a seat and stay there for the duration of a movie. And that’s how Gilreath handled the installation of a 130-inch Stewart Filmscreen screen. The only part the moves, he says, is the masking material that alters the shape of the screen from a 16:9 aspect ratio to a super-wide-screen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. This shape-shifting happens automatically, triggered by a motorized sled and anamorphic lens system, the TheaterScope from DPI. Whatever type of content the owners select, via a ML-600 Crestron remote, the masking system makes the appropriate adjustments.